[Osmf-talk] Reaching out and diversity (Was: Re: AGM and board elections)

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

   the orginal child-care brouhaha was based either on a
misunderstanding or an outright mis-represenation of facts. No matter
what you think about OSM, we should all endeavour to have OSM
represented truthfully in the media; in the original talk it was
insinuated that the OSM community had taken an explicit decision to
prefer male entertainment over child care, and the number of facilities
of each type, which would have counterbalanced the overall message, was
not reported.

Now OSM is mis-represented in the media all the time and we have learned
to live with it; this particular issue however has later been quoted by
people who should have known better.

The whole issue did serve to drive home a point but it was with a very
sour taste; like the police planting evidence in the home of someone
they know to be guilty. A correct result but a fishy way to get there.

On 09/29/2014 11:14 AM, Derick Rethans wrote:
> That's easy to say. When none of the editors make a certain distinction 
> in their presets, then it makes a whole lot harder to actually use those 
> tags. Sure, things might be organised differently in different areas, 
> but it's the difference in even having available options. JOSM has 

... rudimentary presets for "kindergarten", "school", and "university".
Even in the absence of a commonly agreed proposal, these could long have
been at least extended with usual stuff like opening hours, operator,
wheelchair access etc., but that hasn't happened, even though it would
only take a couple hours to make nice presets and I am positive that
there would be no objection on the part of the JOSM team.

Yet here we sit, in a thread with tons of technically savvy people who
profess that diversity is important, at least some believing that the
JOSM preset situation should be improved, and none of them has bothered
to make that change.

Why?

Maybe it is perceived as patching over a symptom instead of providing a
cure. Maybe the lack of a proper kindergarten preset in JOSM is required
as a showcase ("please don't touch this, we need it to demonstrate how
OSM is sexist"). Maybe it is just not important enough. Maybe people
aren't after fixing things but after implementing a general rule that
will fix everything, forever. Maybe people would like to move away from
preset anarchy to a political top-down process that defines which
presets are ok and which not.

But honestly, whatever the excuse, it's still that. An excuse for not
making OSM better. Because it is "someone else's responsibility". Maybe
the board's (who have very little influence on JOSM). Or the JOSM dev
team's (who don't usually even make the presets).

If anyone in this thread truly finds that the lack of certain presets in
JOSM is a problem, add them instead of writing a blog article or Twitter
message or conference talk about how everything is just so wrong.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"